Thorstein Veblen

This page looks at acerbic US intellectual Thorstein Veblen, whose notion of apolitical technocrats is a precursor of what Barbrook characterises as the 'Californian Ideology' and others have criticised as cosmocrats.

     Life

Thorstein (originally Tosten) Bunde Veblen was born, most appropriately, in Cato, Wisconsin, of immigrant parents. After gaining a BA from Carleton College in 1880 and a PhD from Yale in 1884 he taught at the University of Chicago from 1892 to 1906, at Stanford from 1906 to 1909, the University of Missouri from 1911 to 1918 and at the New School for Social Research in New York from 1918 to 1926.

Veblen, like Weber, identified tensions in contemporary society between acquisition, display and a technocratic management. His writings encompassed social mores, phenomenology, business structures, the interaction of commerce and universities, and US and German imperialism.

Although best known for his 1899 Theory of the Leisure Class (responsible for introducing 'conspicuous consumption' into the sociological and economic literature and fostering consideration of sumptuary law), he is of particular interest for writing about technocracy. Veblen made a distinction between the owners of 'business' (profit maximization through market manipulation, restriction of production and other similar practices) and 'engineers' or other managers in 'industry' (concerned with efficiency per se and with production for the satisfaction of human needs). 

     biographies and studies 

There is a concise biography in John Diggins' The Bard of Savagery: Thorsten Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Hassocks: Harvester 1978).

Studies include Magali Sarfatti Larson's The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1977) and Edwin Layton's The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility & the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve Uni Press 1971).

Issues are discussed in Phil Agre's perceptive 2003 Internet Research: For & Against (here) and Peer-to-Peer and the Promise of Internet Equality (here) and in Thorstein Veblen and the Revival of Free Market Capitalism (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2007) edited by Janet Knoedler, Robert Prasch & Dell Champlin. For technocracy see William Akin's Technocracy & the American Dream (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1977) and Howard Segal's Technological Utopianism in American Culture (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1985).

     writings 

Veblen's extensive and often quirky writing in several fields includes -

Higher Learning in America

'Kant's Critique of Judgement', Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1884)

'Some Neglected Points in the Theory of Socialism', Annals of AAPSS (1891)

'Bohm-Bawerk's Definition of Capital and the Source of Wages', QJE (1892)

'The Overproduction Fallacy', QJE (1892)

'The Food Supply and the Price of Wheat', JPE (1893)

'The Army of the Commonweal', JPE (1894)

'The Economic Theory of Women's Dress', 1894, Popular Science Monthly

'Review of Karl Marx's Poverty of Philosophy', JPE (1896)

'Review of Werner Sombart's Socializmus', JPE (1897)

'Review of Gustav Schmoller's Uber einige Grundfragen der Socialpolitik', JPE (1898)

'Review of Turgot's Reflections', JPE (1898)

'Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?', QJE (1898)

'The Beginnings of Ownership', 1898, American Journal of Sociology .

'The Instinct of Workmanship & the Irksomeness of Labor', American Journal of Sociology (1898)

'The Barbarian Status of Women', American Journal of Sociology (1898)

The Theory of the Leisure Class: an economic study of institutions, 1899

'The Preconceptions of Economic Science', Parts 1 and 2 1899, Part 3 1900, QJE;

'Industrial and Pecuniary Employments', 1901, Publications of the AEA

'Gustav Schmoller's Economics', 1901, QJE

'Arts and Crafts', 1902, JPE

'Review of Werner Sombart's Der moderne Kapitalismus', 1903, JPE

'Review of J.A. Hobson's Imperialism', 1903, JPE

'An Early Experiment in Trusts', 1904, JPE

'Review of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations', 1904, JPE

Theory of Business Enterprise (1904)

'Credit and Prices', JPE (1905)

'The Place of Science in Modern Civilization', American Journal of Sociology (1906)

'Professor Clark's Economics', QJE (1906)

'The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers', Part 1, QJE (1906); Part 2, QJE (1907)

'Fisher's Capital and Income', Political Science Quarterly (1907)

'The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View', University of California Chronicle (1908)

'On the Nature of Capital', QJE (1908)

'Fisher's Rate of Interest', Political Science Quarterly (1909)

'The Limitations of Marginal Utility',Journal of Political Economy (1909)

'Christian Morals and the Competitive System', International Journal of Ethics (1910)

'The Mutation Theory and the Blond Race', Journal of Race Development (1913)

'The Blond Race and the Aryan Culture', Uni of Missouri Bulletin (1913)

The Instincts of Worksmanship & the State of the Industrial Arts, 1914

'The Opportunity of Japan', Journal of Race Development (1915)

Imperial Germany & the Industrial Revolution, 1915

An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of its Perpetuation, 1917

'On the General Principles of a Policy of Reconstruction'

'Bolshevism is a Menace to the Vested Interests', , Dial (1919)

'Peace', Dial (1919)

'The Captains of Finance and the Engineers', Dial (1919)

'The Industrial System and the Captains of Industry', Dial (1919)

The Place of Science in Modern Civilization and other essays, 1919.

Review of J.M.Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace, Political Science Quarterly (1920)

The Engineers and the Price System (New York: Viking 1921)

Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: the case of America, 1923.

'Economic theory in the Calculable Future', AER (1925)

Essays in Our Changing Order, 1927

J. Dorfman's Thorstein Veblen and his America (New York: Kelly 1961) and Thorstein Veblen: Essays, Reviews and Reports - Previously Uncollected Writings (New York: Kelly 1973) offer other material.





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